In Al-Shifa hospital, the situation keeps getting worse
Patients at Al-Shifa Hospital. Photo from 31 October 2023 © Mohammad Masri
Our teams were able to speak with Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff who are still inside Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza city.
Unfortunately, the situation in the hospital keeps getting worse. Below is the message from a Doctors Without Borders surgeon in Al Shifa, recorded at 8:10 AM on 13 November 2023.
"We don’t have electricity. There’s no water in the hospital. There’s no food. People will die in a few hours without functioning ventilators.
"In front of the main gate, there are many bodies, there are also injured patients, we can’t bring them inside.
"When we sent the ambulance to bring the patients, a few metres away, they attacked the ambulance. There are injured people around the hospital, they are looking for medical care, we can’t bring them inside.
"The situation is very bad, it is inhuman. It’s a closed area, no one knows about us. We don’t have an internet connection, you managed to call me now, maybe you’ll try 10 times before you can reach me again."
"The medical team agreed to leave the hospital only if patients are evacuated first: we don’t want to leave our patients. There are 600 inpatients, 37 babies, someone who needs an ICU, we can’t leave them.
"We need a guarantee that there is a safe corridor because we saw some people trying to leave Al-Shifa, they killed them, they bombed them, the sniper killed them.
"Inside the Al-Shifa hospital, there are injured patients, medical teams. If they give us guarantees and evacuate the patients first, we will evacuate.”